Palgrave Advances in the Crusades

The crusades were a devastating force of the Middle Ages that still, perhaps more than ever, exerts a powerful influence on medieval scholarship. This volume is intended as an introductory guide to the directions that this scholarship has taken, rather than to the history of the crusades themselves. Aimed at undergraduates and academics, the study presents a series of approaches by both young and well-established scholars, supported by lists of suggested further reading, maps, a chronology and a timeline of significant academic studies. The twelve essays are clearly structured and include discussions of the ideology and logistics of crusading, and the different ways in which academics approach the material evidence in order to examine such topics as gender, frontiers, colonisation and national-feeling. The final essays are concerned with the way in which Christians, Byzantines, Muslims and modern Greeks regarded the crusades and each other.